Graeco-Aryan, or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, is a hypothetical
clade
A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
within the
Indo-European family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
that would be the ancestor of
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
,
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, and the
Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken i ...
.
The Graeco-Armeno-Aryan group supposedly branched off from the parent Indo-European stem by the mid-3rd millennium BC.
Relation to the possible homeland
In the context of
Kurgan hypothesis
The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
, Graeco-Aryan is also known as "Late Proto-Indo-European" or "Late Indo-European" to suggest that Graeco-Aryan forms a dialect group, which corresponds to the latest stage of linguistic unity in the Indo-European homeland in the early part of the 3rd millennium BC. By 2500 BC, Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian had separated and moved respectively westward and eastward from the
Pontic Steppe
Pontic, from the Greek ''pontos'' (, ), or "sea", may refer to:
The Black Sea Places
* The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores
* Pontus (region), a region on its southern shores
* The Pontic–Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from nor ...
.
If Graeco-Aryan is a valid group,
Grassmann's law may have a common origin in Greek and Sanskrit. However, Grassmann's law in Greek postdates certain sound changes that happened only in Greek, not Sanskrit, which suggests that it could not have been inherited directly from a common Graeco-Aryan stage. Rather, it is more likely that an
areal feature
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
spread across a then-contiguous Graeco-Aryan–speaking area. That would have occurred after early stages of Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian had developed into separate dialects but before they ceased to be in geographic contact.
Scientific discussion
Evidence for the existence of a Graeco-Aryan subclade was given by
Wolfram Euler
Wolfram Euler (born 5 May 1950) is a German historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist.
Scientific work
Euler gained his doctorate (Ph.D.) in 1979 at the University of Giessen under Professor Rolf Hiersche. Euler's thesis was on parallels in nomin ...
's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
nominal inflection. Graeco-Aryan is invoked in particular in studies of
comparative mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics.Littleton, p. 32 Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used ...
such as
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014.
West wrote on ancient Greek music, Gree ...
(1999) and
Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins ( /ˈwɒtkɪnz/; March 13, 1933 – March 20, 2013) was an American linguist and philologist, known for his book ''How to Kill a Dragon''. He was a professor of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and after retireme ...
(2001).
One controversial hypothesis has placed Greek in a
Graeco-Armenian
Graeco-Armenian (or Helleno-Armenian) is the hypothetical common ancestor of Greek and Armenian that postdates Proto-Indo-European. Its status is somewhat similar to that of the Italo-Celtic grouping: each is widely considered plausible without b ...
subclade of Indo-European, though some researchers have integrated both attempts by including also
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
in a putative ''Graeco-Armeno-Aryan'' language family, further divided between
Proto-Greek
The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Ae ...
(possibly united with
Phrygian) and thus arriving at an ''Armeno-Aryan'' subclade, the putative ancestor of Armenian and
Indo-Iranian.
Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who support the
Armenian hypothesis
The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-Eu ...
, which asserts that the homeland of the Indo-European language family was in the
Armenian Highlands.
References
;Bibliography
* Kim, Ronald I.. "Greco-Armenian: The persistence of a myth". In: ''Indogermanische Forschungen'', vol. 123, no. 1, 2018, pp. 247-272. https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/if-2018-0009
Further reading
*
Martirosyan, Hrach. "The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: the relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian". In: ''Journal of Language Relationship'' 10, no. 1 (2013): 85-138. https://doi.org/10.31826/jlr-2013-100107
{{Indo-Iranian languages
Indo-European languages